


Aglaophotis

by uumuu



Series: Fëanorians beyond the First Age (AUs) [6]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Non-Canonical Character Death, Post-Canon, Witch!Maglor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 05:37:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12574868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: Maglor wants to return home. Finrod helps him do it.





	Aglaophotis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amyfortuna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/gifts).



As it turned out, Maglor was not hard to find at all. 

Middle-Earth had sunk deeper over the centuries. All that was left of the Blue Mountains were two islands, separated from each other and from the continent by a narrow strip of sea that had swallowed forests and mountains as well as the towns that had witnessed the last of the Eldar's days in Middle-Earth. Maglor lingered on in the north of the larger island, and once Finrod got off the boat that had taken him across the Great Sea by the grace of Ulmo's power he did not have to travel too far inland to come across him. 

Maglor lived on the top of a hill among hills where the grass was blindingly green and the sky more often than not a sheet of silver that made the green seem even more dazzling. 

Finrod could not hide his dismay when he first set eyes on his long-lost cousin again: Maglor was gaunt and pale, his hair dishevelled, his clothes torn and stained. His hut was little more than a shack, and there was no furniture in it save for a makeshift bed hidden behind a tattered tapestry. He was even more dismayed by Maglor's reaction to his arrival, the mistrust in his eyes – once so bright – the way he tensed and jerked back when Finrod tried to hug him. 

Finrod didn't lose heart, however, and with gentleness and compassion quickly overcame Maglor's diffidence. Soon they were sharing a very modest meal, sitting across from each other on the ground next to Maglor's very modest hearth. The flames were not kind to Maglor's face. If Morgoth and his servants had not been banished from Middle-Earth thousands of years before, Finrod would have guessed they were still at work in the deep shadows that beset Maglor's expression. 

“Your mother wanted to come, but she would be utterly lost in Middle-Earth, so I came instead. We all miss you,” he said, after asking Maglor simple questions, careful not to be too forward.

“My...mother?” Maglor asked, looking up at him with the dull empty eyes of a not-too-clever pupil faced with something their mind cannot grasp.

Finrod drew his eyebrows together, his heart aching with bottomless pity. “Nerdanel, the daughter of Mahtan...don't you remember her?”

Maglor blinked a few times, then lowered his gaze, a childish smile spreading slowly over his lips. “Oh yes...my mother,” he said with the sweetest voice Finrod had ever heard, a voice that gave him hope that Maglor might be restored to his former self. 

Night fell sooner than Finrod expected, drawing a shroud of mist over the hills. As they lay down to sleep in Maglor's narrow bed, Finrod wrapped his arms around him, ignoring Maglor's stiffness, and held him close. Maglor felt even thinner than he looked in his arms, and cold, like a pup that had spent too long out in a snowstorm. Finrod wished he had come sooner, wished he could wipe away his cousin's misery with the touch of his hands, but he reminded himself of the Valar's grace and fell asleep feeling confident again.

On that first night he had a dream: the silver sky grew darker and darker, the clouds seemed to stack one upon the other upon the next, until they became so thick and heavy, so solid, that they looked like they would crush the earth at any moment. From them an even darker cloud shot down like the giant claw of an unseen beast. Maglor was there, inside the claw, trapped. 

Finrod awoke with a start, but Maglor was sleeping quietly next to him, and he could glimpse the starry sky between the uneven boards of the hut.

The next day, Finrod helped Maglor with the little chores that kept him busy during the morning, marking the passing of time with singing that he hoped would soothe Maglor and make him remember his life in Valinor, before the Oath and the long hopeless struggle in Beleriand. He was glad when Maglor joined him, and their voices rose together, filling the hills with songs of renewal. 

“I would very much like to go home...my real home,” Maglor admitted, timidly, when they sat down to lunch. Maglor didn't seem to be too hungry even after the morning's work. His pupils chased the flames flickering in the hearth, stared unseeing at the sparks and ash flying from it, as if focused on something beyond them, something greater.

“The Valar will allow you to return, that's why I'm here.”

Maglor lifted his head in surprise. “Really?”

Finrod smiled. “Ulmo took me here and he will bring us both back to Valinor.”

“Oh.” Maglor mirrored Finrod's smile, and his eyes too came alive.

That second night, Finrod dreamt again. Maglor was out in the rain, singing with his arms stretched out to the sky. Only the rain didn't look like real rain. It looked more like a shower of needles, or something even smaller than needles but sharp and deadly.

The following nights the dream was always the same: fire that flowed and rippled like water, and ash, heaps of ash, storms of ash, a world smothered in ash.

Finrod grew anxious: the dreams had to be a warning, from Irmo, and he couldn't hide to himself his relief when the last day allotted to him dawned on the mountain-tops-turned-hills, now covered in the hoarfrost of late autumn. 

He gently laid a hand on Maglor's arm while Maglor attempted to get a bigger fire by feeding the hearth with twigs that were too small.

“The time granted to me is almost over. Let us go home.”

Maglor shook his head violently, shaking his hand off. “I can't,” he said in what sounded too much like a choked sob. “Not yet.”

“Macalaurë. Your mother is waiting for you. And Elrond and your other cousins.”

Finrod tried to grab his hand, but Maglor started and stood up. He stood staring down at the fire, nervously rubbing his arms, then turned and walked to the other side of the hut, his legs unsteady. He returned with an object clutched almost feverishly between his hands. “Bring this to the Valar.”

Finrod took the little bottle Maglor handed to him, and almost dropped it. His hand seemed to refuse its touch, so he gingerly held it up to his eyes between two fingers. It didn't weigh much. The glass was stained over by the patina of time. The liquid inside it was red and viscous, barely shifting as he turned it. “What is this?”

“They will know.”

“It's not...blood is it?”

Maglor gave a desolate chuckle, and Finrod silently apologised for asking such a tactless question. 

“Of course not. Please, bring it to the Valar, if you want me to return to my true home, to my family.” Maglor's voice broke as he finished. He looked straight inside Finrod's eyes and a tear rolled down his cheek.

Finrod set the bottle down, stood up, took Maglor's bony hands in his and kissed him hard on the lips. 

*

The gathering in the Ring of Doom looked on curiously as Finrod came forward and delivered Maglor's gift in Manwë's own hands. 

“What is this?” Manwë said in his colourless drone of a voice that mingled with the air, unblinking eyes staring at the bottle. 

“Macalaurë said you would know.”

Manwë lifted the bottle and all the Valar and Maiar turned to look at it. The bottle sparkled and glittered. It lured and trapped all light around it – that of the many torches and the few lamps, of the stars, of the moon, until it became the sole source of light in the Ring of Doom. Finrod looked up and paled: a threatening mass of clouds had crept over them from the east, dense and heavy, as in his dream. 

Just like his dream, a jagged streak of black lighting shot down from it. Its end opened up like a flower, unfurling and spreading fluttering petals of darkness. Maglor's face emerged from it, shining marble-white inside the inky blackness. His bright eyes, eyes that were as sharp and lively as diamonds, turned towards Finrod.

“You have my gratitude, Findaráto, deliverer of death.” 

A cold dread – and an even more terrifying realisation – seized Finrod. “Macalaurë! This can't be –”

“It was natural for you, to take your “dreams” as visions sent by Irmo and warnings about my situation,” Maglor said, stretching out two thin arms that emerged from where his chest should have been.

Oromë grasped his bow and fired one of his mighty arrows at him, but it was swallowed by the blackness and disintegrated into fine dust.

Maglor smiled and lifted his hands. The little bottle slipped from Manwë's hold, and rose. It rose and rose, drawing an arch towards the centre of the Ring, where it stopped, afloat above the aghast murmuring of the people beneath. Maglor chanted a brief spell, glass cracked, and the bottle broke. Its contents shot down, as fast as Oromë's dart, aiming for the Valar and the Maiar. 

Tiny shards of pure white light pierced them and poured liquid fire into them. The fire flowed under Varda's sun-kissed skin, simmered underneath the outer shell of to Námo's bone-pale face. Those in the crowd who were not blinded by the explosion looked on in horror as the Valar and Maiar agonised in their fánar, their limbs twisting and bloating until at last their true forms broke at the seams, burned from the inside, and burst into a rain of ash.

*

Maglor pushed a little boat out into the sea and climbed aboard, taking only the Silmaril with him from his little stone hut on the shore. Unhurriedly, he sang the little boat to the open sea, and beyond. He sang for days and days, hardly catching his breath. 

At last, a shore of ash appeared on the horizon. The boat ran aground on the narrow strip of land created with the dregs of the Valar's existences, the path opened through their destruction. It widened and widened, meandering between tree-like pillars which rose from the water and disappeared in the hazy sky above. Maglor walked it slowly, his song now echoed by sundry other voices.

The path ended inside a cave. Beyond it, a verdant land stretched endless, trees, grass and blue blue sky as far as the eye could see. Maglor glimpsed it, smiled and collapsed on the ash. Exhausted, he breathed his last.

But that was not his end. 

From the world beyond the cave came his father and his brothers, and his grandfather and grandmother, and his nephew. Fëanor picked up the Silmaril, which had slipped from Maglor's hands, and Maedhros gathered his bother in his arms. Fëanor put the gem on his chest, and wrapped his hands around it, so that it would strengthen him with its blessing for when he would awake again.

**Author's Note:**

> "Aglaophotis" means 'brightly shining' or 'splendid light', which of course made me think of the Silmarils when I first found out. The little bottle filled with red liquid is a nod to the aglaophotis in Silent Hill instead, which inspired the story (aglaophotis doesn't really agree with divine beings in SH).


End file.
